After looking into the timeline, the things that needed to be straightened and the momentum that was created, lets go to the final part, the lessons to be learnt from that plus the experience.
1) How to create a great title to attract readers
A single mail and a great funny game had to be put into a title that will be published on the title page of a online newspaper. So it has “made to stick” and it has to attract the potential readers.
It is one headline amongst others and is fighting for clicks. Clicks that create page impressions that create money for the oneline newspaper.
The title that was used in most of the cases was “Ex-staffer plays games with Virgin Blue”
Great, because:
- its simple and easy to grasp and cut to its core
- its unexpected, grabbing people ’s attention
- its concrete, people get the idea and will remember it much later
- its emotional, and people care about the story and want to find out more
2) Interpretation of a fact to attract readers
There was a mail, there was the truth and then there is an audience that wants to be attracted.
So you as a journalist make the story so that it becomes interesting.
Just a staff member making a game reflecting on some moments they had in a project doesn’t do it.
So you need to pump up the tiger to make the story bigger to get a bigger audience and to get the momentum we have seen
3) How newspapers are connected and reusing content
Of course that’s no news, how ever, could be observed very well in this situation.
All newspapers (brisbanetimes.com.au, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and WA Today) are connected to each other and belong to Fairfax Media.
Using the same layout and the same stories plus some local flavour. Still the news are selected independently and the homepage looks different for every one of them.
Smart approach as you as an individual are reading your local newspaper online presence (if you do) and probably not surfing the other sites. An article is written once and reused on all the sites and synergies are kicking in.
4) How momentum is generated in the internet
Of course, this was small. But it was great to see the momentum and watch everything develop over the day.
First one newspaper,
then others published the story as well Forums were coming in Blogs started to post about it
and other international newspapers used the content as well
If it would have been bigger …
more newspapers would have used the content, even in other countries
far more blogs would have written about it and trackbacked the content
twitter and friendfeed would have been other sources
It it would have gotten really big …
The story would have carried along for several more days
Press would have called me to ask for exclusive interviews
and I would write a book and my memorars
Glad it was small.
I might use this case for a project management presentation which explains how to develop a game like this and how to make sure its not creating any damage for yourself and others.
World is moving on, and so should we.
Hope everybody enjoyed the game and had and shared the fun we had putting it together.
and addresses the Co-Conference approach (PMOZ and SEPG) and describes his experience in the in the following way:
Overall, I think the co-conference is a great idea. But there are a few challenges and none of them detract from the co-conference concept.
One of the challenges I suspect from my chats with a few people at the conference and from my experience at other events, is that it is an easy transition from the software/systems engineering perspective to move into a project management forum, because project management is so much a part of software/systems engineering. But the other way around is problematic. If a project manager has experience in the software, defence or aerospace industries, then software/systems engineering isn’t so foreign. But if you are a project manager in say construction or civil engineering, then going to a software/systems engineering presentation at a conference means you can be confronted with gobbledygook.
and
I suspect that PMOz/SEPG got this balance about right, particularly with some of their joint keynotes. But I also suspect that an offering of “systems engineering basics” for project managers may perhaps be useful - more so than “project management basics” for systems engineers (although I do note there were some interesting workshops suitable for either stream).
Pat is absolutely right, the combination is worth doing, but there have been far to many streams in parallel (7 streams) where the co-conference approach doesnt achieve what Pat is mentioning, you have so many topics and by far cant attend as many as you wish and want. Some times more is less what i mentioned in one of my previous posts. An Pat is referring to that as well with the following recommendation:
Perhaps a worthwhile objective would be to have a single stream for the combined conference for refereed academic papers. This might be accompanied by a properly put together electronic journal published by the combined conference. I have no doubt this would be well received and would assist in that integration of theory and practice so necessary for the professions to progress.
And as he says, may be something to consider for 2009.
So many articles have been published around the iPhone. Hitting the market at June 29th 2007 more than a year has passed. How ever, Australia, always a little different and remote got pleasured July this year. Returning from my long hike in the western US, the first thing after 4 weeks not spending a dime was to get access to an iPohne. Prior to that i was and and still am using a Blackberry provided by my employer around one and a half years ago i was suffering from not having access to my private email and on the weekend if you want to be reached via phone the whole thing was turned on and you never got a real break from work, therefore i made a decision to get one of the new toys as soon they hit the Australian market.
After 2 weeks of heavy usage this is a summary
1) The Phone
Comes with all you need, standard phone capabilities, a poor Camera, wide open display, and an expensive telco contract. The look and feel, especially the feel is outstanding, a must touch gadget. Phone quality is far better than the other device i was using in parallel and a better reception where i life which is because of the provider i have chosen. Wireless LAN which is great to reduce transaction costs and GPS which is great for positioning based services is built in. The iPod and Video capabilities are standard and well know based on the iPod and iPod touch.
Sometimes the speed / responsiveness is not the greatest, it seems that the iPhone has to think before it takes action. What ever happens in the background, it takes some time, some times.
2) Usability
The Usability is outstanding, no doubt about that. My little daughter was able to use the weather and Google Map application instantly, she is browsing through website as she has never done anything different to that. The ‘haptic’ experience is great and the touch screen is one of the first ones where finger movements are recognised and used for application navigation through out. I always refused to change brands as i got more and more scared (must be because of my age) to leave my comfort zone and get used to something different, also my experience trying different devices wasn’t supportive for a change either (I was on Nokia for the last 10 years). But with the iPhone this change was so dam easy.
The only obstacle is the touch screen software based keyboard and if you are fast writer on a blackberry or with T9 on Nokia, this thing is really demoralising. Never found it so hard to type a message. Beside that the iPhone is so slippery in your hands that you basically have to hold with one hand and type by using one finger with the other. Using a blackberry was a faster and more rewarding experience.
3) Standard Features (Phone, Mail, Contacts, Calendar)
The usability of these features / applications varies. The phone capabilities are great, never was so easy to establish a conference amongst different parties, put on the speaker etc. To find the right number while you are listening to your voice mail is a challenge without looking at the phone. Integration into Contact list is like any other phone, but more fun to scroll through. Mailing features have never been so easy to configure and access. Lots of mail accounts all in one application and quickly to configure and access. The mails are pulled via your phone from the email providers you are working with and not pushed as sometimes mentioned in other posts. You are able to configure that pull routine, and according to your battery lasting and information desire but also consider the phone plan you have signed up for as the more frequently you pull the more bytes you spend, you choose between 15 min and an hour or manual. Contacts are easy to access, how ever the response time of the application increases quickly based on numbers of contacts you have. Sometimes the response to your fingertips are around 3 to 5 seconds which is annoying sometimes.To key in new contacts via the iphone is as time consuming as for other phones, but it feels nicer. The calendar is probably the application which is least of fun. Not from accessing and viewing it, but entering an event is just to many fingertips until you have an event captured. This needs improvement.
4) MobileMe
This ist the standard synchronisation application on the web for your mails, contacts and calendar entries. As Apple drives the concept of a closed shop as we see it with the iTunes application for quite some time, the same concept is followed when it comes to synchronisation. There are options built in to sync it with outlook express, how ever, if you are an internet only person and manage your mails, contacts or emails by Google for example no real synch options are out there. Services are provided but the level of trust needs to be questioned as you have to provide all your passwords to some provider. MobileMe wasn’t the smartest and best launch for Apple, its expensive for services you receive elsewhere for free ($119 for a year), its slow as pages are reloaded when you access the browser or tab, has some strange behaviour and is not the most intuitive and usable application seen so far. Also the capabilities are limited and the integration of these applications are not as well solved as with Google Gmail for example. Currently i have signed up in the free of charge period that will last for an extended period until 15th of December and i have to make a decision by then whether its worth the money and the have improved the functionality and stability.
5) The Apps (iTunes Apps Store)
That’s the killer feature for my opinion. They started of with 500 apps in the iTunes Apps Store and 4 weeks ago there have been over a 1.000 and heaps of them are free of charge. I have never seen a phone in the last 12 years of my phone experience that had so many apps available, increasing daily. Like 2 month ago in Australia you have had to by voice recorder to record something. Today you find a 99c application that does all this. I will have a category and a stream for that where i will introduce Applications for the iPhone that are worth having for a Project Manager.
6) Phone for PMs
I will and must say a strong YES. Not the standard features or the feedback you are getting from your peers and everybody wants to have a scroll, no, its the applications that do the job, and every day there will be more apps to look at that increase the value of that phone and will make it an replaceable device. And that’s what Apple anticipates. How ever, Lets wait for Googles Android, to be release later this year, and several Phone Companies have announced App Stores for Android already, as Google follows the open strategy. Lets see and let the battle begin.
Never had a phone like this, inspiring, addictive feeling and haptic experience plus more than 1.000 applications to choose from. Some glitches and on mobileme some work to do. A companion to love more every day.
Two days of conference just passed by and i returned back from Melbourne on Wednesday evening.
Bottom Line, the conference had a greater audience than the one at the Gold Coast but couldnt reach its own set standards, set in the prior year.
So lets lets go through it in a structure way: 1) Delegates - Around 600 delegates have been attracted, these have been the unofficial numbers communicated via the Grapevines. Due to the fact that PMOZ got combined with the SEPG (Software and Systems Engineering Process Group) these numbers might be perceived far bigger than the ones from 2007. Actually, even if these were the unoffical numbers, we couldnt see them. Perceived around 300 to 400 people.
2) Venue - The venue was in Central Melbourne with some bars around it. Acommondation, if you took the easy route which i did by booking via the registration website as they have included two hotels into the booking path, you could either choose the Sofitel or a Hotel (Appartment flat) within 15 min walking distance, which was the cheaper option. The venue suited the conference and the number of participants. What i do not understand why you would put the best pratice sessions in a weired room (lomng room with windows to the ceiling) on the 35th floor where delegates need to take an elevator to get up and no sign directs you to that room. I understand that there might not have been enough rooms at the basement but its hard to get people up there and have the delegates focused if they can enjoy a fantastic view over Melbourne
3) Streams - seemed to be reasonable (see my post here) how ever at the end it didn’t matter. Delegates focused on the presentation topic and not of the streams. I don’t know whether the stream concept is worth it, as i know presenters that have pulled out because they have been put into the wrong stream (whether by accident or because it was the only empty space left). It gets you focused, but it also limits your abilities to put presenters into the right spot if a stream is “booked out”. I thought, there were just to many streams. 6 streams for both conferences plus the workshop / case study stream is a waste. So many interesting topics across both conferences PMOZ / SEPG and so many you cant attend. And the anger is even bigger if you realize the presentation you went to is worth leaving. Sometimes less is more.
4) The Trade Show - The Trade show attracted the abvious industry candidates, like big ships like Primavera, IBM, BEA and others but also smaller sized comapnies like the reformed PMPartner Group, AIM with its great specialiced Book stand (Another post to follow on that), Mosaic Project Services, Mindavation and others. The Trade show was the perfect playground for networking and find topics to talk about. Whether it got the value for the exhbitiours, I guess so, as you get your 100% target audience. Whether they talk to you or other delegates is something different. That the food was placed in the exhibition area was definately helpfull compared to last year at the Gold Coast where the trade show was outside in a tent and hardly got any delegates especially during presentations. The only hard thing was that the trade was split in two different areas over two different levels.
5) The Food and Nibbles - this is a difficult one, as not much to talk about as not much was there, The organizers tried to split the delegates and guide them to the relevant exhibition floor to get there food by handing out green and yellow cards. How ever, one area was far easier to access and more convenient to the other so most of the people hang out there even if they should have gone to the other area. Lessons learnt, you cant manipulate a hungry and food desperate crowd. Therefore one foodarea was always empty where the other one still had some food even if you had been 5 minutes late, 10 minutes later most of the food was gone.If you got some, it was great to have, especially the fruits were fresh and not that popular.
6) The Evening / Dinner Function - Tuesday night the dinner function was on, with the theme “Bling it on” where you suppose to dress like a rapper or something similar. 90% failed, so did we. How ever, some plastic jewelery on the tables helped to at least put on a sparkling plastic ring. The awards for the prowd sponsors have been handed over and the music started playing, and of course according to the theme they played rap songs. A dance group did some warm up during and after dinner, attracted the crowd to dance and shortly into the evening it was to talk and communicate as even in the rear of the room you couldnt understand a word. The trivia for that night had the “Blues Brothers” as the topic where the people able to use a smart phone and check out wikipedia had a clear advantage. We have been good in typing but by far not good enough. Compared to the GoldCoast event and the great standard set there, this one was 2 levels below. The pirat theme, the costumes, the music, the movie “pirates of the carebean” and the dance floor have been the ingredients for a better function menue than this years on. “Bring it back”
7) Networking - Was great, as lots of spare time was granted and the trade show provided lots of reasons to talk to product and service providers across the industry. The Badges highlighted Name and Company which might always be a reason to start talking to somebody.
8) The Presentations - The program sounded spot on, even if hiped topics like “Social Project Management” and “Agile Project Management” didnt appear and some of the topics seemed familiar, whether it was stakeholder management, Communication, Virtual Teams, PMOs and benefit realisation, including my own one which was almost the same presentation i have given 2007. The feedback i was hearing wasnt the greatest and what i was seeing supported the feedbacks shared amongst the participants. Presentation time to short, 25 minutes slots is hardly enough especially for the more unexperienced speakers. Some of them took 10 minutes to get from slide 1 to slide 2, at the end they realised that they ran out of time by given the signal from the facilitator and rushed through the last 7 slides in 2 minutes or just stoped in the middle of it. I would recommend to go for 45 minutes and alow 5 to 10 Q&A at the end. Another factor was how the program was structured. 3 presentations in a row. After a Q&A session attending a presentation in room A you had to rush to room B where they already got started and you missed the introduction.
9) The Speakers / Presenters - You had all sorts of speakers, the inspiring ones (”Size matters”), the detail ones (”As you might not be able to see this on this slide”), the audience focused ones (”Please read the Case that i will hand out know”), the shy ones (”Can everybody hear me”), and so on. You cant make a call and you cant get it right for these events. You call for speakers and you sometimes get what you want and sometimes you dont, thats the risk. As a delegate you cant mitigate it, because the Plan B doesnt work, to break out of a presentation and join another one, because of the 25 minutes slot its just to late after you realised that you should leave.
10) Organisation - Just one word, phantastic. Not a single issue not a single glitch. Susan Hobbs and Cecilia O’Grady plus Tye Hillam, did a great job to hold everything together. What you could do better, is to skill your reception staff a little better around common questions around accomodation and other areas outside the conference that delegates might ask. But from the whole planning via execution and closure of the conference it was great.
11) The Conference Workbook - There was none last year (at least i do not remember) and this years one has been great to read through and even check it out later after the conference. All the information was in there, around speakers and the abstracts of their presentations, the exhibitours and other important event information. Well done, as its very hard to put this together especially when the time is getting tight and last minute program changes have to be incorporated. The CD as part of the conference pack had all the papers and presentations on it, which is a great service that ou have to pay for extra with other conferences.
12) The Website and Booking / Registration - The website held all the information that was required for the conference and the registration process did its duty. How ever, the Internet capabilities and standards have moved on and it feels a little outdated. No Communication layour for participants, no interaction, prior, during and after the conference. The website didnt seemed to be very changing and the usability and look and feel needs improvement. Look at the USA and how conferences are supported by new webtechnologies (Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Social Networks and Groups, Video Streams, etc.) and let the delegates take even more benefits by being able to interact for closer with their peers than today.
14) What was missing - Beside all the stuff i mentioned earlier, free Wireless LAN access for all delegates. Just check how many delegates have a laptop in front of them at conferences in the USA (almost every second).
Bottom Line - What went well
- Organisation. Handclaps for eventcorp and its team
- Number of delegates
- Trade show and networking opportunity
- Topics picked
- Workbook and CD
Bottom Line - What to change / needs improvement
- more time for each presentation
- Quality Check on speakers and develop “Green” list with the ones to attract next time
- Dinner Function according to feedback above
- Provide enough Food
I am looking forward to 2009 (Canberra) and 2010 (Brisbane). See you there.
Enjoy the ride and improve on the trivia you might have missed:
